Horn of Salvation

Some writing from Advent season of last year:

"The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.  He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."- Psalm 18:2

 

The use of the word horn in this context refers to strength.  Horns are seen throughout the old testament in many different settings.  As instruments of praise, and vicariously as weapons, they were used by Joshua’s army as they marched around Jericho.  The altar in the temple was fashioned with four horns: one at each corner.  Horns were used to contain oil for anointing.  In this passage, Zecharias, a priest, is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and prophesies:

 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant.” -Luke 1:68

Elizabeth was barren and her fertility was a gift from God as well as a sign of what was to come: the Messiah.  We find this imagery earlier in the bible, in a similar case of infertility.  The story of Elkanah and Hannah.  Hannah pled for God to open her womb and He eventually did.  In her song of thanks, found in I Sam 2:1-10, she says “My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted high.  My mouth boasts over my enemies for I delight in your deliverance…He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

What is so interesting about the parallel between these two stories is what the birth of each of these people (Samuel and Jesus) meant for the nation of Israel.  In both stories, God’s priesthood was established but something more was desired.  Samuel ushered in the time of Israel’s kinship;  whether this was good or bad is a different story.  John the Baptist, through Elizabeth and Zecharias ushered in the Kindgdom of Heaven through Jesus the Messiah.

In both instances, the horn is a perfect symbol to both represent what already is and what is to come.  The horn as part of the altar and as an instrument of worship and anointing symbolizes the priestly aspect of things, while in both references the word is used to depict strength.  In both of these passages the speakers are longing for something that is absent and they desperately desire.  They need God to come through in his strength.  So a different picture is needed to illustrate what horn means in these contexts.  

The best way to describe this is very plainly as a fierce, violent, masculine strength.  Like horns that bud from a young buck, this strength is the bite behind the bark.  Any animal in the wild can do serious damage once it has grown its horns and has broken them in.  And this is the symbol we see as Jesus being our king, coming to do battle and wage war against those that have oppressed us.  The same thing was desired in Samuel’s day.  Downtrodden Israel wanted a valiant king to wage war against its enemies.  God provides this in both instances, but it isn’t quite what Israel expected and God doesn’t deliver quite how they wanted him to.  But what better way to physically depict this budding strength than in the birth of a baby boy?  "Boaz" (the name of my second son), in Hebrew, means “strong and swift”.  The horn of salvation that God is to us is so firm and solid, but like anything in life with true depth and meaning, this takes time to grow and mature.  God is our strength when we don’t even see it or recognize it.  Young bucks will someday grow horns and be fierce in battle with others.  One day Boaz will be a towering giant, but not now.  But the times we don’t recognize are the times that God is at work; sustaining and strengthening us so we’ll be prepared when we eventually realize we need it.

Illuminate

There are these tunnels on the freeway right where I grew up that I still get to drive through on my way to and from church and work.  My sons are fascinated by them (as I was when I was younger....and still am now).  What is so mesmerizing about tunnels?  I mean, they're super dark, but they're not, because they have cool, bright lights.  Along with many other things I experience with my sons, this provoked reflection on what deeper meaning this could be an analogy for.

Throughout the course of our lives, we're bound to encounter dark areas.  Maybe we create these dark areas ourselves, or maybe we are thrown into them by no will of our own.  I believe that everyone must encounter something of this sort sometime in their life.  Tunnels are intrinsically dark, gloomy, frightening, and unknown.  Yet they offer the opportunity - the choice - to be illuminated.  This illumination provides comfort, and a way to navigate through turns and obstacles that could otherwise be fatal.  It's no simple task, because the initial work must be done in darkness - with little to no direction.  Yet once the initial spark is made, the process becomes a bit more feasible.  In the end, the tunnel is lit and the dark course can be navigated.  Danger and destruction have been avoided.
What's interesting about tunnels is that they are far more enjoyable at night.  Why?  Because as you're driving through the darkness of night, you come across a stretch of light that is brighter than anywhere else along your journey.  During the day, you go from daylight to a tunnel that's a bit dimmer.  At night, (especially in one of these particular tunnels, when all the lights are on), you drive through and feel like you actually need a pair of sunglasses.
 The lights that were meant to just get you through are now a beacon that shines brighter as your entire course grows darker.  And these lights can represent various things.  For me, the tunnels represent dark times...very dark times.  And the lights represent the deep lessons I learned through these times.  Furthermore, they are truths that were proven because they had to be, else I would have been destroyed.  And at the time, these seemed to help me barely survive.

When the journey progresses, and everything around you becomes dark, these lights mean even more.  And they are a joy, because they remind you of the lessons you've learned, and prove that they are all the more true.

Don't Blame God (copied from elsewhere)

I can't take credit for this, but agree with everything that is said here and wanted to share it with others.  I got this as part of a daily emailing I'm subscribed to:


A few phrases I hear that drive me crazy, and what I usually don’t say in reply:

“I know it will work out, because God would not have put me into this if He was not going to get me out.“
Maybe God did not put you there; maybe it was your doing.
“God only gives us what we can handle.“
Unfortunately, most of us have a bad habit of biting off more than we can chew, and then blaming it on God.
“God’s Word shall not return void.“
This is used to claim that a prayer will be answered as we prayed it, or sharing the Gospel will result in salvation. This seems more like witchcraft to me. The scripture that is misquoted here is from Isaiah, and it’s about the words God speaks, not what we say:

“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”[Isaiah 55:11 NKJV]

“It’s a sign.”
You can make anything a sign. Some folks live their life by perceived signs, and make a mess of things.
“I’m waiting for a sign.“
Jesus had some rude words for those who are looking for signs.
“I don’t know why He led me into that deal/choice that cost me a million dollars/my house/my marriage, but I know it was Him.“
Or, maybe your pride won’t let you admit you made a mistake?
Basically all of these have a way of putting on God things that are often not God’s doing. These are ways of excusing our errors, justifying our actions, or allowing us to feel good about continuing to do something that is somewhere between silly and suicidal.
In addition, just once I would like to hear someone say “I thought it was God, but now I know I was wrong.” I have had people continue to say something was God when it so clearly was not, and it’s just annoying!

The Bread and the Wine

I wrote most of this a few months ago, but had to return to finish it later:

It's been a while since I've written.  I've had a difficult time the past month, dealing with grief, loss, sorrow.  I've been going to a new church for the past 6 months.  One thing I really appreciate about my church is communion.  The time of reflection is always meaningful and what is shared is more often than not something that stays with me throughout the entire week.

For as long as I can remember, I've always had this type of reluctance/anxiety right before 'partaking' with everyone.  Having been taught the story of partaking without being in the right place with God, my mind usually flashes back to this lesson (I Cor. 11:23-32), wondering if that's me.  Then my mind starts turning.  "Do I really grasp what this means?"  "Do I understand fully what Jesus did for me?"  "Do I have unresolved sin with a brother/sister?"

Because I've asked myself these questions so much, I've come to find myself focusing so hard on the words the facilitator uses when we share in the Eucharist (fancy theological word for the Lord's Supper).  I ponder the meaning of what is shared, like something should click. "The body of Christ broken to reconcile us to God and to each other.  The blood of Jesus that continually washes us from all unrighteousness."


So, a few weeks ago, it did click.  I had been trying to figure out what the difference is between the bread and the wine.  I mean, it's all the same meal...it's God forgiving us, and us accepting and acknowledging it, right?  But I find myself chewing on these words.

"The body of Christ broken to reconcile us to God and to each other."
"The blood of Jesus that continually washes us from all unrighteousness."

Having written them down, it seems clear as day.  But upon reflection...both on the words and on other things I've struggled with/written about in the past...the picture becomes clearer...and a bit more gruesome.

How these two symbols come together to form the most sacred sacrament is beyond any parallel we have on earth.  Here we have this strange duality of God displayed for us, as we've seen in scripture.  The lion and the lamb...God's judgment and mercy.  The two are brought together through the crucifying of Christ.
Reconciliation is achieved first only through judgment and punishment.  We focus so much on God's grace and forgiveness.  We insist that God chastens and disciplines his children...he does not punish them.  This is true, but only for one reason.  Christ bore the punishment already.  So we see that punishment is necessary.  It's part of God's nature.  Otherwise, Christ wouldn't have needed to die.  Christ didn't need discipline or chastening.  The cross was the venue of God's wrath.  Anger is real.  As humans, we get angry.  Anger is an emotion that exists when one is wronged by another.  God was wronged by the human race.  Every creature he made upon whom he bestowed the choice to love him or betray him.

The pain that God experiences is beyond my comprehension.  It's one thing to realize that all sin hurts God.  And like the decreased focus on God's wrath, we almost have a decreased focus on our sin against one another.  David, speaking of his sin with Bathsheba declares that he has sinned against the Lord, and only against Him (Psalm 51).  I've always thought about this in a sense that takes Bathsheba and Uriah out of the picture...that David's sin is against God and only God because He's disobeying God, not Bathsheba nor Uriah.  However, I believe that the reason sin hurts God so much is because all sin has negative consequences on God's creation.  Most sins outwardly hurt others.  Some sins are self-destructive.  Either of these scenarios cause God much pain.  He cannot bear to see his children, his creation, suffer.  Contradictory it may seem, God's dual nature of grace and judgment is actually one in the same.  God's judgment is against those who cause destruction and pain towards those He loves.  The irony is that since all creation is fallen, none of us deserve this divine retribution on our behalf.  In reality, we all deserve to be the object of this retribution.  And this is where grace enters.
Because or sin distances us from each other, and from God, we need reconciliation.  Christ's broken body is the element that reminds us of how we were reconciled.  There's really no room for warm fuzzies.  The reality is that Christ was beat and broken and bore the wrath of God and that was the only way anything would be forgiven.  This currently is the harder part of communion for me.

The wine (juice) is the element that in a single icon represents life and death.  It's the life inside of us, coursing through our veins, supplying our body with all that it needs to function.  Yet to see blood, outside of the body, requires it to be missing from where it belongs...thereby resulting in death.  This somehow functions as proof, as a reminder, of what was done.  Proof that Christ was broken for us.  And the cleansing is continual, constantly reminding us and God that His wrath was already poured out on Christ.

Biblical Emphasis

In the Bible, words/ideas are repeated to add emphasis to the thought.  This appears in both the Old and New testaments.  Sometimes we see the actual repetition in the English translation and in other instances, the double use of the word translates into another form of emphasis.  In Genesis 2:17, "you shall surely die" is translated from "mot tamut": "dying die".  "Surely" is used to make the emphasis.  "Verily, verily, I say unto you..." makes the double usage clear.  Additionally, there are many instances where something is reworded to repeat the point with a different phrase.  We see this a lot in the Psalms specifically.

Last Sunday, before communion, someone shared concerning God's holiness and how it is referenced in the Bible.  Isaiah, during his commission (Isa 6:3), witnesses the seraphims crying "Holy, holy, holy."  This triple usage of a word for emphasis is rare.  It is seldom seen elsewhere in the Bible.  It's appropriate, because the one thing that keeps us from God's presence is the vast chasm between His holiness and our lack thereof.  The Hebrew word for Holy is Kadosh.

Back to repetition.  Modern English has deemed double-negatives improper.  However, both in Shakespeare's day, and in ancient Greek, negatives were doubled just as adjectives were, to add emphasis.  This idea of emphasis reminded me of something I learned while in theology school...the most emphatic verse in the Bible.  Hebrews 13:5.  Even more emphatic than Holy, holy, holy.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
   "Never will I leave you;
      never will I forsake you."

This is actually quoted from the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 31:6.  However, the Greek translation actually adds more emphasis to the thought.  Here's the actual Greek: 

Ou me se ano oud ou me se enkatalipo.

Without delving too much into an English 101 review, 'ano' is the verb translated as 'leave' and 'enkatalipo' is the verb translanted as forsake.  'Se' is the prounoun translated as 'you'.  That leaves 5 more words:

Ou me se ano oud ou me se enkatalipo.

'Ou' can mean "no", "not", or "never".  'Me' is translanted as "not".  'Oud' is the greek for "nor" or "and not".

So, transliterated, we have:  "I will not never leave you, nor will I never never forsake you."

To compensate for our difficulty with double negatives, this verse could be more accurately expressed as something like:

"I will never ever leave you.  And I won't ever forsake you.  It simply won't happen."

It's quite amazing to me that these two instances of extreme emphasis lend to such polar ideas.  The idea of God's holiness brings us to realize how far removed / distant we are from Him.  The deeper our comprehension of this reality, the more we realize how little we deserve Him.  Reflecting on God leaving or forsaking us, one must examine His motive.  Why would he leave us?  Why would he forsake us?  It's actually quite obvious.  We're awful.  Isaiah 64:6 says all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.  He deserves to throw the towel in and quit on us.  But he chooses not to.  Perhaps this emphasis is here to balance and re-assure us.  The closer we come to understanding how far off we are, the more we need to be assured/reminded that He still loves us.

There's a bit more to this emphasis I'd like to share, but it will take some time.  School for me is wrapping up, so I'll hopefully have a bit more time to commit to writing.  Please pass this along to anyone you think would benefit from / appreciate it, and as always, comments that spark meaningful discussion are welcome.

Sorrow vs. Fear

Being the math geek that I am, I wanted to title the blog "Sorrow does not equal fear" ... using the mathematical symbol for not equal...but since I'm not an internet geek, I couldn't figure out how to do that.  So, that was the idea I was trying to get across.  Moving on...

For the longest time I've equated sorrow/grief with fear.  That is, in (correctly) believing that I do not have to live in (unhealthy, non-divine) fear, I've (incorrectly) assumed that my sorrow and grief will go away too.  As soon as these emotions come back, I deduce that I am again living in fear and try to correct my thinking/feeling to rid myself of these unpleasant emotions.  This can continue as a vicious cycle.  So, in order to think about this properly, first a biblical look at fear and love:

"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.  In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.  There is no fear in love.  Perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love."  I John 4:16-18.

Click here for a great, brief, explanation as to why the word "all" isn't in this translation.

Here, the greek for fear is 'phobos' - interpreted as terror, or 'panic flight'.  It comes from another greek word 'phebomai' - which means 'to be put to flight.'

Reflecting on what fear actually is helps me see that it's very different from pain, sorrow, or grief.   Furthermore, experiencing this misinterpretation of emotions, I see more clearly how love drives out fear and what it drives it out of / away from.


What's really happening here is that love is fully confronting and embracing (not annihilating) sorrow and grief.
True love hurts terribly.  But when this fear (of pain, grief, sorrow) is driven out, peace abides.  Peace is not the absence of our sorrow or pain.  Peace does not remove these feelings from our lives.  If anything, peace comes only secondarily to our heightened sense of these emotions' existences.  True peace is unattainable without first recognizing our difficult state of affairs.  It is not our naivety or ignorance of impending disaster.  It's the full recognition of its looming presence...its continued existence, and ability to all but destroy us.  It's our realization that anything in us that can be destroyed is not necessary for our existence...and the further understanding that the very essence of us which cannot be destroyed is what God holds...and this is impervious to the evil in this world because God protects this part of us - the us that He created.

This leads to the beauty of redemption...God's specialty.  The joy of redemption is impossible without the agony of rejection (think Peter).  This is why love hurts.  Because it is strong...strong enough to withstand pain and sorrow.  If love is self-protecting, it isn't perfect love (I Cor 13:5 - "it is not self-seeking), because fear has not been driven out of it.  Sorrow must not be avoided since perfect love casts out all fear and we attempt to avoid sorrow out of fear.

Christ already passed this test of fear.  He did his part.  The challenge now is of us to trust.  I believe that if we are really trusting, we do not have fear.  So our love towards Christ is oftentimes just a reflection of our trust in Him...allowing Him to love us - and perfect us - in His time.

This in turn leads to us loving others - without fear of pain, sorrow, or rejection...and we can do this since we trust that God's love is enough for us.  

-The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

My dad can beat up your dad

So often, as Christians, we seem to want to 'prove' God to those outside the church.  Sometimes this is done on the platform of academia / theology.  Other times, it's simply through sharing our experiences and showing how God has come through for us.  This is akin to playground antics.  "My dad can beat up your dad."  We're all proud of being God's children.  This is a good thing.  He created the entire universe and he loves US.  Pretty amazing.  We should feel special.  We want to show off how good He is to us and prove that he's the best dad around, trying to convince others to become adoptees.  This makes a good sales pitch when we have a shiny new toy to bring to school.  "My dad loves me so much he bought me this aweseome new thing!"  Or, we're proud of how rough and tough he is.  He gets us out of the messes we tangle ourselves in.  He's our rescuer.  We're proud of Him and want to show him off.  We have an easy time doing this when we feel special about what He's doing for us.

However, no kid is bragging to his friends how great his dad is because he's grounded, and he realizes that it's in his best interest, and so this makes his dad phenomenal.  Or, how wise his dad is for letting him learn from his mistakes the hard way, so he won't make them again.  We tend to complain about these instances, or we keep quiet about them, not wanting to show this side of Him to others...they might decide they don't want that kind of dad.
The point is that we aren't God.  We don't always understand what He has in mind for us.  The dangerous thing to do is to try to formulate how He's working or to attempt to understand how it will all work out.  God is sovereign and He does love us.  He knows what He's doing.  We oftentimes don't know what He's doing (or what we're doing).
I find that I get into the most trouble when I try to figure out how God is working on somebody else...or I get so focused on somebody else being in relation with God, that I forget about my position as God's son.
God wants us.  I don't personally believe that he regularly makes things happen or not happen.  He does, however, use life, as it happens, to teach us and bring us closer to Him.  I think that if we believe this and keep this mindset, we will do well to grow closer to Him as his children.  We should spend less time worrying about how God comes across to other people and more time focusing on what He wants to do with / teach us.  It's all His to begin with anyway.
"The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it"  -Psalm 24:1

Burning Van

So this is a bit out of the ordinary for this blog, but it's pretty amazing, so I will share it anyway.

I was driving home in the minivan with the boys and noticed the A/C wasn't working very well.  Next, I noticed a funny overheating type of smell.  Shortly after that (seconds later) I noticed the hood was smoking.  I became frustrated, thinking of how I'd have to take the van in to get a new radiator.  As I merged lanes to pull off into a parking lot, I noticed an electrical burning smell...similar to the kind I smelled in my days working as an electrician when doing repairs from electrical fires.  When the smoke got thicker I realized it was time to get out of the van.  I put the car in park, took the keys out and got out of the van to go around and get the boys (Elliott and Bo) out.  By the time I was out of the van, I saw that the passenger part of the hood was on fire.  I flung the sliding door open and woke Elliott up, telling him it was important that he get out of the van right then.  I took Bo out, still strapped into his car seat and got the boys on the lawn underneath a tree in the shade far away from the van.  I turned around to look at the van and saw my mom driving by.  Weird.  She pulled over and the boys loaded up with her while the van went up in flames.  All of this happened over the course of about five minutes.

I'm not sure that I've processed all of this yet.  I mean, the minivan is completely gone, and the boys and I are completely fine.  All of this could have been so much worse.  I told Elliott at least 10 times today how proud of him I was that he obeyed so well and didn't ask why when I told him to get out of the van.  He was in the middle of a nap at the time, btw.  I'm so thankful for experiences like this, because it's through these bigger things that we can really deeply learn important lessons.  Just a week ago I was trying to explain to Elliott why it's so important that he listens and obeys without asking why.  I told him that, sometimes, there's no time for explanations...action just needs to be taken.  He got to watch the van burn too.  I'm thankful for that.  I mean, how cool is it to watch things burn in the first place, let alone a big car, let alone your own.  But I'm thankful for the lesson.  After telling him how proud I was of him, he asked what would have happened if he stayed in the van.  I told him it could have been really bad...bad for him, Bo, me.

I know that God oftentimes tells me to do things...and it's not necessarily that I don't understand why, and no, it's not a clear audible voice...but it's knowing what I should do...but not feeling like it, or wanting to.  I think that God gives us instances like these in our life to look back in retrospect and see what may have happened if we didn't listen.


Tonight when I put Elliott to bed, he prayed and asked that God would help the van feel better.

Broken, Needing Gentle Healing

The past few days (or weeks) have been notably difficult for me.  I’ve been waiting to write since the few times I have, I’ve noticed that nothing good has come out.  By good I mean true, uplifting, encouraging.  I’ve done a good share of venting, writing out my frustrations but these have been in no way helpful aside from allowing me to be honest before God.  I seem to inevitably write anytime a few common threads seem to weave their ways though various avenues of my life.  And having been in a very segmented mode for the past while, these dominant themes tend to grab my attention.  Recently, these themes are pain, brokenness, and restoration (not necessarily in that order, nor a finite, non-repeating series).  C. S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain” has been a personal favorite of mine over the past year.  There is so much truth in this book and I encourage anyone who has found themselves up against a wall (of pain) in life, to read this.  I believe it makes as much sense as is possible out of why we must go through pain in this life.

Zena is a woman at my church with a great blog called My life is good (and so is yours).  As a side note, her husband is an amazing teacher and shared at our church for two weeks.  If you want to listen to something encouraging and insightful, that offers hope, you can download his two sermons from our church’s website:  ROVC Sermons (May 9th and May 16th).

I just read Zena’s latest blog on brokenness.  It was refreshing to be reminded that we are all broken and that we can’t fix ourselves.  That’s the way it is.  There’s hope that one day we’ll be put back together, but it will not be by our own works.

I also just re-read a manuscript written by a theology professor of mine named Dr. Cross that never made it to book form…it was too long.  The book is about the Church and he has a chapter that addresses spiritual authority vs. spiritual abuse and how it applies to the process of restoration in the church.  Restoration from brokenness.  I’ve been reflecting on these themes, how they relate and apply to my life.

Brokenness hurts.  But healing from this brokenness is necessary for our growth.  Amazingly, God designed our bodies and environment in an amazing way so that they are self-healing much of the time.  The problem is that the healing process often hurts far more than the breaking and we’re afforded the opportunity to ignore the symptoms and avoid the healing.  Breaking can be quick and sometimes completely out of our control.  The initial shock sometimes even numbs us…this can be to our advantage for the time being.  The pain could otherwise be intolerable.  Our natural response is to make the pain stop…however it must be done. 

Sometimes, the long-term fix requires further, yet temporary pain.  In our advanced medical age, with the advent of anesthesia, we tend to forget this.  Thankfully for us, the use of drugs can almost eliminate the pain.
However, I’m not aware of any (healthy) emotional/spiritual anesthesia.  Maybe counseling, therapy, good friends?  I think of counseling/therapy as more of the (painful) healing aspect whereas friends  may be more representative of the towel to bite when the pain becomes intolerable (or maybe the process of biting the towel…biting your friends is generally frowned upon).  Nothing really eliminates the pain.  I mean, Jesus doesn’t even promise this.

So God does this fixing of our brokenness.  His primary objective is to restore us….to make us whole again.  His purpose isn’t to make us comfortable and happy in the short-term.  If this was his purpose, he could hook us up to a spiritual morphine drip for the rest of our days, or magically take the pain away.  But this isn’t how He works.  He wants real people.  He wants whole people.  He is our healer.  But thankfully, he is gentle.  He adds no pain to the equation.  I say this because healing still hurts…but there’s too often pain added to healing that is unnecessary.  The pain of judgment, malice, condemnation.  And this is precisely where everything gets a bit more complicated.  God isn’t just a big spirit in the sky that only works with us on a one-on-one basis…he uses His body…which is comprised of a bunch of imperfect, not-so-gentle people.

I tend to think of healing as the process of recovering from terrible things that have happened to me…being deeply emotionally wounded by another person…having a piece of metal shot in my eye…etc.  I don’t tend to think of those broken parts of me that are due to my neglect.  I tend to think of the wounds I’ve caused others even less.  The following applies to the damage we do to ourselves that we need healing (restoration) from.

Dr. Cross, the theology professor, talks about the process of “gently restoring” a brother or sister who has fallen into sin, found in Galatians 6:1.  The Greek for “restore” is katartizete.  This is actually the same Greek medical term used to refer to setting a broken bone.  As a church body, we’re responsible for restoring one another….GENTLY.  Unfortunately, gentle is a very subjective term.  Cross offers these two scenarios for thought:  A 40-year-old man who’s experienced his share of physical trauma and pain over life would probably respond mildly to an experienced physician setting a broken humerus.  A five-year-old who has never been to the hospital before would probably not respond well at all to the same doctor, or any doctor at that.  His or her perception would be that the doctor was not gentle at all.

I think it’s important for us to examine ourselves in both of these positions (as doctor and as patient).  How gentle are we with those who need help?  Do we perhaps set those bones a bit more firmly to remind the patient not to be so careless next time while riding their bike blindfolded?  Do we decide that a healed arm is more important than a pleasant experience and therefore abandon any attempts to be gentle?  I’ve unfortunately heard (and experienced) this argument from people in the church.  While there is a very basic fragment of truth in this, it nevertheless disregards the exhortation to be gentle.

Contrarily, are we focusing on and protesting the perceived un-deserved pain of healing (that is ultimately the work of God)?  Do we insist that we are being wronged by those trying to help us?  Do we insist that this process of healing (aka, life) should only reach a certain threshold of pain, if any at all?

Who can objectively look at this and say who is being too big of a baby and who is being too rough?  I think that God could, but He doesn’t, because we’re probably all off by varying degrees and at different times.
The spooky thing is that over the course of a lifetime I believe that we all end up experiencing both sides of this scenario.  The danger is to pity ourselves for our circumstances or to rub the noses of our adversaries in the all-too-familiar situation that we once experienced.  This is where empathy (and forgiveness) comes into play.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest meanings of pain that we’ll ever comprehend.  Simply the opportunity to relate to and help others (and be related to and be helped!).  I think it’s important for us to grasp this…because God works and acts through his people.  Pain, healing, brokenness, restoration…so much of this occurs through the same broken vessels.

The present danger is to overlook our own errors in these interactions…either as the careless doctor, or the wimpy patient.  Yet even more dangerous is, as a patient needing healing, to ascribe this unnecessary pain to God and interpret it as his anger and vengeance against us.  The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. (Psalm 145:8)

Can Anybody Help?

I have an interesting job.  I've been at it for a little over two years now and I have my ups and downs...good days and bad days, but overall I enjoy what I do and I believe that in the grand scheme of things, I help people.  To summarize my profession, I monitor peoples' brains, nerves, and spinal cords while they undergo surgeries that could be potentially harmful to these structures.  One of the difficulties in doing this is that the field is still fairly new and (like most of science, and life in general) there is much more to learn.  Occasionally, during a surgery, we'll notice something in our data / signals that looks wrong or different, without much of an explanation.  After much troubleshooting and communication with everyone else who could be adding to the problem, there is sometimes to resolution.  This can be very frustrating and lead to questions of confidence.  "Am I doing this right?  Did I place something incorrectly?  Did I not realize that this patient has some weird disease that is making all this stuff not work?"  From time to time this happens and their seems to be no explanation for these events.

Every year, the society that credentials for my field has an annual meeting where all the brilliant minds present their latest findings and talk about things they've seen over the past year.  These guys will present case studies where they saw something different from the norm and were able to understand what this difference meant and explain it to the surgeon, ultimately improving the patient's outcome.  This past year I was comforted when one of these big shot guys talked about a case that was very similar to one I had monitored.  I listened intently, taking notes, waiting to hear the answer to my problem.  The conclusion, however, was that he didn't have the answer.

To a degree, this was encouraging.  I mean, hey, this guy is pretty smart and he can't make sense of this stuff either.  It makes me fell a bit better until the reality sinks in.  The problem still isn't solved.  I'm almost worse off now, because I don't even have hope that somebody can help me fix this.  This means that it's up to me to figure it out.  Thankfully (for me and everyone else involved), since I'm not a doctor, life-altering (for he patient) decisions like this aren't handed to me to make in the OR.  But I see this happen all the time through other avenues of my life.

I look for one guy in his fifties or so that seems to have done life well...by this I mean he's still married, loves his wife, she loves him, his kids aren't currently in jail, nor do they resent him.  He's done well at his job without becoming a slave to it.  He's healthy, has a good group of male companions, and has gone through a lot of crap in life and has deal with it well.  He has all the answers.

While there are a lot of good men and good people out there, this guy obviously doesn't exist.  Comforting, in the fact that as I see my life's path diverge and head somewhere I never would have expected I realize that everyone's path in life seems to make these abrupt jogs.  However, this doesn't solve the problem of where I'm at, where I'm heading, and how to make it work how I'd like it to.


So what is the solution?  Or, rather, what is the point of this?  What are we to learn?  I think that is the key...what I'm supposed to learn.  That's truly the only "good" way to deal with the non-ideal scenarios we end up in through life.  Because true growth comes through learning, and I find that meaningful growth usually only comes through the hard types of learning...."learning the hard way".  These frustrations can be an incredible mercy...a miracle if we dare to call it such.  Having no answer for why things don't work gives me more motivation to figure out an answer than anything else.

Specific Purposes?

Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz, Searching For God Knows What) has a blog:  http://donmilleris.com. A friend of mine has been sending me links to his posts and they've spurred good discussions. His most recent post is about God having a specific "plan" for your life and the previous about how to get confidence from God. I wrote this post in response to those posts.

A few thoughts. I've experienced first hand in many scenarios that God does not typically give people magical confidence. I do believe that his "supernatural" grace is bestowed on us to help us trust him to do the really scary stuff that helps develop these traits in us by way of experience and learning. There's no way to evade the scariness. I keep trying, but it doesn't work. We just have to trust Him, and jump in, even if we're peeing our pants while we do so. I think a lot of this directly applies to what being a man is all about. Doing crazy hard, confusing, "no formula" stuff where the failure rate looks pretty high from the outset. But once you get into it and through it, you're way stronger, and you can only point to the big strong awesome dad (God) that's helped you through it. Not having had much male influence and/or encouragement (but also understanding I've had far more than many others) through life really makes this stuff hard to do. Again, I've experienced this first hand.

Does God have a specific plan for my life? Yes and no. That's like me throwing down a huge piece of white paper on my kitchen table with the intent of having Elliott and Boaz (my two strapping sons - ages 3 1/2 years and 20 months) draw the Mona Lisa. Even if one of them was equipped with some amazing 'magical' talent to do this, the problem is that he'd have to contend with the other one messing up his picture the entire time. It'd be nice if we could just be on our own little piece of 8" by 11" and have nobody mess it up. Unfortunately, other people are constantly scribbling on our pages. We, too, are constantly scribbling out others' pages as well. It's called sin.

God, being the awesome God that He is, has this great talent (or, rather, intrinsic quality)of encouraging and teaching us. Instead of ripping up our papers since it looks like crap to most of us, He makes beauty out of our mess. He can even use our scribbles to make something pretty. He doesn't give us fresh paper...I think that would steal the beauty of it and allow us to forget too easily that we're flawed.

If any of us do have a specific purpose ordained by God, we definitely still make mistakes along the way.

On a final note, I've been fixated on the life of Joseph for the past few months. The interesting thing about him is that while God had a specific purpose and plan for his life, He didn't come up to Joseph and tell him flat out. It was only through weird, vague dreams that seemed to upset other people. [Boaz to Elliott: "I'm gonna draw the Mona Lisa cause God gave me natural talent and it's what He's chosen/ordained for me to do in life!" Elliott: scowl]. So it seems that the problem isn't necessarily whether or not God has a specific plan for our life, it's whether or not we know what it is, or how much detail we have about it. Furthermore, it's my experience and opinion that the more we know about what we'll be used for, the more likely we are to try to make it happen on our own terms and end up making a big mess. So I think that not having a specific purpose ordained for your life may be the 'easier' ticket in some forms.

St. Peter

I had a discussion a few weeks ago with a friend that involved St. Peter. Peter gets a lot of flack for denying Christ. I think there's a few valuable lessons we can learn from Peter. The first of which is that actions truly do speak louder than words...and this is true for both sides of the coin. It's easy to judge his betrayal as being spineless. How could he possibly flat out deny his association with Jesus? How cold is that? Some of us are quick to say we would not have acted the same. And, perhaps, this is true. However, we may be missing a lot. I'd like to point out that Peter's words probably held far more weight than ours would. And perhaps his actions carried a bit less. Peter's mind worked a bit differently. This is one fierce guy, quick to the draw, with zeal to back it up. Whether chasing Jesus out ON the water, or lopping off some guy's ear, he was passionate about Jesus and put his actions behind it. We might go so far to criticize how trigger-happy he was...jumping the gun before he was really ready. This explains him jumping off the boat without realizing (or probably just not caring) about his forthcoming failure. In one fell swoop he offs the soldier's ear in the garden. I think Peter would be that guy we went to kindergarten with that was 'special'. Perhaps it's not that he was necessarily any better than the other disciples. He just learned differently. After all, none of us are better people in and of ourselves. We only grow and become stronger and more pure by God's gracious work in our lives. And God, being the personal being that He is, works with us where we are. He created us and knows our personality. He knows what our learning style is better than anyone else. To be honest, I bet the other disciples were a bit irritated with him. He seems like a new testament version of Joseph...the "favorite". My point here is that Peter's expression of faith was just different from the others'. In Matthew 16, he professes Jesus as the Christ and a few verses later is telling Jesus how it's gonna be before Jesus rebukes him and calls him the devil. This doesn't phase Jesus. He gets Peter's personality and embraces him. I think that Peter's feelings are hurt and he is ultimately disappointed and afraid once Jesus willingly goes with the guards. His promises to stay loyal to Jesus are somehow tied to a guarantee of what Jesus would do and how Jesus would defeat all the Pharisees. Peter would be on the "winning side." I think that Peter's denial of Jesus has more to do with his disappointment with himself than it does with disappointment with Jesus. All throughout the night, he watches from the shadows, and suddenly the words Jesus spoke over the past few years begin to haunt him. He is filled with utter shame coupled with immense grief. As he focuses on these words Jesus spoke pertaining to his death, I think he forgets about Jesus' prediction of his betrayal. The third time, in Matthew 26:74, he calls down curses upon himself. My thinking is that this is due to his anger towards himself. He's overwhelmed with the gravity of it all. Everything is clear now, and he is now separated from Jesus as he goes to his predicted death. As the grief can't seem to get worse, he hears the eerie crow of the rooster. This is Peter's breaking point.

I don't think that Peter's betrayal / denial is purely cowardice. I think it has a lot more to do with his being broken in the only way that was possible...for him to recognize his immense shortcoming.

Redemption is beautiful, though. Peter's redemption is beautiful, indeed. The others failed Jesus just as well. They also claimed they wouldn't abandon him, but they did. I think Peter was just a bit more extreme than all the others.

I think that we all have breaking points. I believe that the the importance for us in these times is in how we respond/cope with our breaking. Christ does not abandon us during these times and He promises to always provide what is needed...comfort, healing, help, growth, etc. I am grateful for this.